Murder Victim. He and a casual friend, Nicole Brown Simpson, were found murdered at her Brentwood condominium, just outside her front door. Ronald Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant, was returning eyeglasses that she had accidentally left there at dinner that night. He is considered an accidental victim of the murder, either arriving just as she was being murdered, or shortly before. As police reconstructed the crime, he attempted to defend Nicole from her attacker, but was also cut down. His friend, Nicole Simpson, was a tall, beautiful blonde, who was divorced from her celebrity husband, professional football star and then rising movie and television actor, Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. The police accused O.J. Simpson of having committed the murders. In a highly televised and controversial "Trial of the Century", running from December 1994 to October 1995, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders after it was found that a police investigator, Detective Mark Fuhrman, had lied on the witness stand. In a later civil court case concluded in February 1997, brought by Ronald Goldman's father, O.J. Simpson was found guilty for wrongful death and ordered to pay $8.5 million dollars to the Goldman family.